oh I cheerfully admit to disliking the man for years…. One of my few political joys (you see a hopeful landscape? Maazeltov! Don’t go in for an eye exam!) is that his face is literally falling off, every day. Wilfred mentioned that on HD TV it is painfully obvious…

Almost a year ago, the top strategists of the big-three Democratic candidates appeared at an event at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In response to a question from a student about how the Democrats could avoid being Swift-Boated in 2008, Clinton’s chief savant, Mark Penn, argued that his boss had a proven adeptness at hand-to-hand combat against “the Republican machine.” “She knows how they think, she knows how they act, she knows how to defeat them,” Penn maintained. “And I think that experience is absolutely critical to actually winning this White House.”

Seated across from Penn, Obama’s guru, David Axelrod, mournfully shook his head. “Let me just say that I think our aspirations should be, at the end of the day, not to defeat the Republican machine but to rebuild the American community.” Soon enough, Penn, clearly annoyed by Axelrod’s piety, was contending that the records of Obama and Clinton on Iraq were essentially indistinguishable—which, in turn, brought forth a stern rebuke from Axelrod. “I really think it’s important,” he said, “if we are going to run the kind of campaign that will unify our party and move this country forward, that we do it in an honest way, and that was not an honest tactic.”

At the time, it was impossible to know that you were witnessing a crystalline preview of the campaign ahead, illuminating the thematic and substantive contrasts the candidates would draw. It also hinted unmistakably at the potential that the race could turn radioactive at the drop of a hat.

And a peek at Axelrod. always good to be introduced to the handlers…

As Clinton was stumbling in Iowa, Obama was on the rise. Far more than Penn, Axelrod, a former Chicago Tribune reporter with thinning hair and a mingy mustache, grasped that the yearning to turn the page would be the central dynamic in 2008—and that this presented an opening for as unconventional a candidate as Obama. Sure, Axelrod allowed, Obama’s CV was meager by traditional standards compared with Clinton’s. But as he explained to me last summer, “The real question is, do we accept this broken paradigm of Democrats and Republicans at each other’s throats? That’s why people are so disillusioned with our politics.”

Axelrod, who once worked not only for Hillary but for Bill Clinton (the phrase “bridge to the 21st century” from WJC’s 1996 campaign was his confection), first met Obama more than fifteen years ago and has been by his side all throughout his meteoric ascent. Axelrod believed that Obama could be the sort of transformational candidate he described, for a number of reasons. Although many of Obama’s positions were conventionally liberal, his pragmatism and incrementalism placed him outside any old-school ideological box. His signature accomplishments—death-penalty reform in Illinois, ethics reform in Washington—reflected a yen for cross-party cooperation. And in Obama’s post-racialism, the whole Kenyan-Kansan thing, Axelrod discerned the makings of a brand with enormous selling power. “Barack is the personification of his own message for this country,” he told the Times. “That we get past the things that divide us and focus on the things that unite us. He is his own vision.”

Other other other than that, the earth must have frozen on its axis, I agree with something David Byron wrote…

[B]ut yeah you see fucking idiots all the time saying to themselves that candidate X is only pretending to be a Reagan loving right-wing corporate bitch. It’s insane but there it is.

I think people think that politicians pretend to be more corporate than they “really” are because they have to be to fit in. That’s naive. The corporations don’t look for people who are rabid lefties and try to bribe them. They look for people who are rabid rightwingers but who can pretend to be sane or compassionate long enough to get elected. It would be stupid for corporations to back someone who they thought was only on-side because of bribery since obviously once elected they might turn upon the hand that fed them. The result is that in reality politicians tend to pretend to be more left wing than they really are. Look at George Bush and his “compassionate conservatism” and his “more humble foreign policy”. Rightwingers know that the people hate them and hate their so-called “ideas”.

Apparently lefties never figured it out. ::snip::

Bingo, they don’t get there unless fully vetted. And arrive strung tightly like a trussed bird for the oven, so they can be yanked back should they get even slightly LEFTISCHER ideas…

Oh what a laugh it all is. Pity the nasty joke is on us. It should be on them.

What kind of people are the Clintons? What role will Bill Clinton play in a new Clinton White House? Can they look beyond winning to a wounded nation’s need for healing and unifying?

These are questions that need to be answered. Stay tuned.

The Clintons are the same as they were in the WH – with a couple of added twists, but fundamentally, the very same. Bob Herbert has been at his post since 93… whatever did he write about them then – and all their troubles in office, so many, many of them of their own divising!

Bill and Hill have barely hidden what his role will be. I posted many months ago when I caught a segment of an ABC interview with Bill in Malia (Kate Snow), he clearly said (and ABC did not further comment, but ABC surely ran it, a few times):

Of course I would not be President full time.

The frightening thing is that so many of the electorate are just fine with it. Yikes!

And last, America as wounded nation? Oh GMAFB. There are wounded, degraded and otherwise shamed people in America – and treating people that way is part of the bidness of America… but let’s not paint America as the victim.

“Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime.”

The Morrison endorsement is expected to come via letter from Morrison to Obama that the campaign is releasing later today.

I wonder if all the silly, credulous. get on the band wagon, Lincoln Bedroom people, especially wimmens, who slobbered so hard for Bill feel just the teensiest bit, well, SLAPPED.

Speaking of the Kennedy endorse, from the one they left alive, T… I ALSO laughed reading this in the text of the Ambinder piece… sorry just lauhgable:

[I]t allows Obama to further clarify what, for him, the Old Politics is all about — that is, it allows him to separate the Politics of the Clintons from the politics of Democrats before the Clinton administration — a party dominated by the Kennedy dynasty and their patrons, in many respects.

And the The New Kennedy is even more of an attractive figure, in some respects. He has never shirked the responsibility of Democrats to beat up Republicans, but throughout his career, he has demonstrated a long arm for compromise. Most recently, He worked with President Bush on No Child Left Behind and with Mitt Romney (whether Romney currently accepts it or not) on health care in Massachusetts.

In some ways, there may be no member of the Democratic pantheon who better reflects the consensus-based, transformative and activist-oriented politics that Obama embraces.

What a FUCKING joke..ambinder must be scribbling madly in a hall closet… using the failures, the bipartisan failures to push an old garrulous failure to come out for an empty suit.

Some people online, like FLH and Gilroy and a few others must have whiplash, they ratchet around in who they support, Obama or Clinton. –mcat

But its hard work, it’s hard work, hard work to ratchet around , mostly in between em all who I DON”T support. So many to not choose from . No singular Fraud du Jour.

As for the the most improbable circus clown fillin’ in on the endorsement trampoline, Delaware Dumbo is really the best side show goin’…..
Oh God, Melrath is the entertainment gift that keeps on giving..
Fat Guy in a Little Coat.

(01-28) 04:00 PST Washington — Sen. Barack Obama easily won the African American vote in South Carolina, but to woo California Latinos, where he is running 3-to-1 behind rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, he is taking a giant risk: spotlighting his support for the red-hot issue of granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

It’s a huge issue for Latinos, who want them. It’s also a huge issue for the general electorate, which most vehemently does not. Obama’s stand could come back to haunt him not only in a general election, but with other voters in California, where driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants helped undo former Gov. Gray Davis.

Clinton stumbled into that minefield in a debate last fall and quickly backed off. First she suggested a New York proposal for driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants might be reasonable. Then she denied endorsing the idea, and later came out against them.

Asked directly about the issue now, her California campaign spokesman said Clinton “believes the solution is to pass comprehensive immigration reform.”

“Barack Obama has not backed down” on driver’s licenses for undocumented people, said Federico Peña, a former Clinton administration Cabinet member and Denver mayor now supporting Obama. “I think when the Latino community hears Barack’s position on such an important and controversial issue, they’ll understand that his heart and his intellect is with Latino community.”

Obama’s intention is to draw distinctions between himself and Clinton on what are otherwise indistinguishable positions on immigration. Both have adopted the standard Democratic approach of favoring tougher enforcement along with earned legalization.

The Illinois senator is differentiating himself in three key areas: driver’s licenses, a promise to take up immigration reform his first year in office, and his background as the son of an immigrant (his father was Kenyan) and a community organizer in Chicago. ::snip snappy!::

He walked on water, he turned water to wine, and now he wants to be your candidate for president.
That’s right, it’s Jesus who should be the next leader of the free world, according to a website launched this month called http://www.JesusIn2008.com.

It invites voters to shape his platform, even nominate a contemporary running mate in this electronic nominating convention, then use the results to guide their real votes in November.

The Jesus running in 2008 is not divine but rather “Jesus the man, the revolutionary individual who comes to us through history as a model for ethical and moral human behavior,” says the site’s creator, Stephen Heffner.

::snip::

Jacques Berlinerblau, who teaches at Georgetown University and is author of Thumpin’ It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today’s Presidential Politics, says the site “will let the secularists and non-believers get their ya-yas out because it’ll be funny to see evangelicals and fundamentalists fume.”

But, he says, if people seriously discuss “what Jesus would want as a candidate, it could make people think harder about the choices they make in the political process.”

Once in a while, a member of the MSM inadvertently shows just how far his or her head is inserted up his/her lower digestive tract. Such an occasion occurred yesterday as David Broder proves yet again that he is either completely clueless, or naive, or just plain stupid. Reality could assault and batter this man, violate every orifice in his body, stop the planets in their tracks, and otherwise announce itself in ways that would be obvious to any sentient human being, and The Dean Of The Washington Press Corps would still write about the Cloud Cuckoo Land he inhabits as if it’s the world as experienced by real people.

Time was, I could and would have provided the thorough explication (or deconstruction, if you prefer) that this piece deserves. I no longer have the inclination to do so, so I will limit myself to only one aspect of it (and while this is long, you could devote a very long article to ripping this piece into the shreds it deserves to be). I’ll just say that journalism professors who wish to provide their students with a template for “Don’t Let This Happen To You!” would be well advised to distribute Broder’s latest column (published in the WaPo Outlook section in yesterday’s paper) to their charges.

Anyway, once we get past the unintentional joke of the Dull Beyond Words Broder criticizing anything as “bland,” and read some introductory verbiage that should never have been written or published, we find the following passage:

My personal experience with (former GOP presidential candidate Fred) Thompson illuminated one of the real puzzles of the past year. Last summer, as word circulated that he was about to join the campaign, a member of his staff phoned with an invitation to lunch.

I readily accepted; I had not interviewed Thompson since he left the Senate in 2003. We met at a restaurant in McLean, and the candidate arrived alone, with no press aide in tow.

We visited for two hours and he answered every question, outlining plans for a campaign that would be notable for its boldness. Repeatedly, he emphasized that the only reason he saw to run was to raise issues that the other candidates were too timid to address. Those issues, he said, included the need to expand military manpower and increase the Pentagon budget, while attacking the “unaffordable” entitlement programs that dominate domestic spending.

Thompson was particularly critical of farm subsidies, and when I asked if he was really going to take that message to Iowa, he said, “Yes, but I’d like to keep that off the record until I announce out there.” I agreed to omit that detail from my column but reported that he was going to enter the race with rhetorical guns blazing, and that was his reason for running.

Then I sat back and waited — and waited. In time, Thompson unveiled a serious proposal to attack the long-term deficits in Social Security — another of the major entitlements. But I never heard the speech on the farm subsidies. When I asked for a follow-up interview with Thompson, his new press secretary found reasons to put me off.

Would a bolder campaign delivered with some of the personal passion I saw in Thompson at that lunch have produced a different result?

First off, only in the mind of David Broder and his ilk could a demand to increase military spending be portrayed as a “bold” issue that “other candidates were too timid to address.” Beyond that, we have the business of attacking farm subsidies, which would indeed be a bold stance for any candidate to take, especially in a state like Iowa, which gets a flood of Federal money for things like ethanol subsidies (although the notion of arousing voters passions by talking about farm subsidies is yet one more idea that could only occur in the mind of Broder and those like him). And Thompson says he will indeed tell the Iowans that this must stop, but by all means you must not let them know that in advance, so keep that off the record. Broder then goes out and writes a column that praises Thompson with vague generalities in which the only truly newsworthy and substantive item, i.e., his promise to attack farm subsidies, is left out. Needless to say, in conversations held around the office, in TV green rooms, and Beltway soirees, Broder lets everyone know what he knows but can’t tell the public, swearing the rest of the In-Crowd to keep it silent themselves, thereby helping to inflate a candidacy that we can now see never stirred the interest of anyone outside the greater Washington, DC area, and only a tiny if influential clique inside it.

Ultimately, Big Fred lets Little Davey down! He doesn’t tell the Iowans that they must wean themselves from the Federal Teet! And he refuses to grant a follow-up interview where Davey can ask him “why not?” If only Fred had possessed the courage and passion to speak his mind without those pesky intermediaries like press secretaries and media consultants, all would have been well in the realm of Davey the Gardner.

Broder has been conducting interviews and writing up columns like that one for a very long time now (over 40 years). You would think it would have occurred to him that 1) Thompson’s showing up to that lunch solo was a tactic intended to get Broder to mention that he “boldly” appeared without his handlers and was therefore less able to dissemble (“he has the nerve to go one-on-one with a tough interlocutor like me!!!!”), and, most importantly, 2) Thompson never, ever, intended to tell the voters of Iowa that he was in favor of cutting/eliminating farm subsidies (anyone who did that would register negative numbers in the state’s caucuses). What he wanted to do was get Broder to write a piece calling him a man of courage and candor. So he promised to come down forcefully on the side of an issue that everyone in the MSM believes is the right thing to do, while guaranteeing that he would never have to pay the political price for such a stand because Broder promised not to quote him on that subject. Incidentally, no one who works for a major media outlet knows or cares anything about farm subsidies (except that they are VeryVeryBad!), nor do they know or care about anyone who would be affected by their elimination, so calling for cutbacks in this not-for-attribution manner is hardly the act of courage or candor Broder pretends it is. In any event, Broder got played, plain and simple. Thompson went out of his way to be engaging and chatty when it suited his purpose, and hid behind his handlers when it didn’t. It’s the sort of thing you would expect to happen to a reporter who’d been on the job 6-18 months and was getting their first real chance at a big story.

Well, I see the Really Great Issue Facing The American People is whether or not the Clintons are being catty and nasty about Barak Obama (there’s some passion, Davey!). Maybe Billary can spend a little time in courtesy class before Super Tuesday. Awful as the GOP candidates are, at least Romney and McCain are spewing venom over the Iraq War, an issue of some substance, however stupid and/or evil their views on the subject may be.

While the recent spate of endorsements for Obama doesn’t change my disgust with the whole charade that is current US politics, I do find it very interesting that Billary have alienated so many pillars of the Democratic establishment. In fact, given their proclivity for schmoozing and seducing people who loathed and tried to ruin them (the Bushes, Scaife, even Bob Kerrey was openly hostile towards them at the start of their presidency), this is very curious. Maybe they finally went too far in prostituting themselves (something that would not be known to the public but openly discussed behind closed doors between major political types).

Whatever the reason, it is fascinating to see. I wonder if they can continue pulling rabbits out of hats and still get the nomination?

I had a really transformative political moment, gee ALL ON MY OWN without daddy/big bro Obama or Governess Hillary… a couple of years ago.

I was listening to John Lewis on the floor of the House… and suddnely I had had it. had it. Fully, with them all. the fake promises, the cadences, the liabilities that revovle back again each election. The delivery of nothing, ever. The scams the cons the money laundering they ALL DO…

Had it. had it.

Then a few months later I saw via C-Span a reception in DC at the HQ (the political lobby arm) of the Int Brotherhood of Electricans… as I recall ti was that union. They have a modern glass and painted steel girder penthouse with a veranda that looks over DC, which is still to this day a fucked southern city with sickening colonial realities (the congress cannot even properly oversee the city zoo, much less the peoiple who live in DC)… the reception was to benefit Ted Kennedy and some new book he had out, some soft political slobber game.

John Lewis was there. The only black that I saw (hard to believe, but I watched for over an hour, Ted Kennedy did a reading and there was a gathering of wee Kennedys and so on)… amongst all the known Dem leadership and Dem leaning pundits and consultants and all of them.

John Lewis acted like a servant that day (he attended Kennedy) and was treated as an old family retainer.

Whoa. The New York State chapter of the National Organization for Women attacked Ted Kennedy for his endorsement today with some real heat.. The Times Union reported it first (writing, “‘Scathing’ feels inadequate here.”), and I confirmed its authenticity with the president of the organization, Marcia Pappas.

I started to pick out the most eyebrow-raising passages but, that proved kind of hard, so here’s the whole thing:

“Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. Women have buried their anger that his support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills. We have thanked him for his ardent support of many civil rights bills, BUT women are always waiting in the wings.

[May I say, BOOM! — Mcat]

“And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one). ‘They’ are Howard Dean and Jim Dean (Yup! That’s Howard’s brother) who run DFA (that’s the group and list from the Dean campaign that we women helped start and grow). They are Alternet, Progressive Democrats of America, democrats.com, Kucinich lovers and all the other groups that take women’s money, say they’ll do feminist and women’s rights issues one of these days, and conveniently forget to mention women and children when they talk about poverty or human needs or America’s future or whatever.

“This latest move by Kennedy, is so telling about the status of and respect for women’s rights, women’s voices, women’s equality, women’s authority and our ability – indeed, our obligation – to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first woman after centuries of men who ‘know what’s best for us.’”

As with many of these advocacy groups, different chapters wield varying influence in different states, and NOW isn’t the sort of political player in New York that, say, NARAL, is.

He can call Rahm. Or his bestest new friend Kerry, whose brother Cam spent part of the summer of 04 in israel, hanging with the most hard core pro settlement. Think I recall a report in the israeli press that he even walked at the head of a winger pro settlement march.

Personally I think the Lobby would be batshit crazy to attack Obama. They’ve already gotten singed attacking Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu. Do they really want to attack a rising political star who’s popular among Jewish liberals anyway?

I think this “Hussein” attack is coming mainly from the Clintons. Asking Haaretz to defend you is a bit insulting actually. It’s implying that all Jews stick together. Frank Rich probably won’t wash where Obama shook his hand and grabbed his arm. I don’t think American Jews hate Obama.

oh my guess is there def are factions of Jews inside the USA fully capable of hating obama.

elements of the JDL for one, the bomb squad.

I try not to underestimate people.

What I am nto waiting for the high ptiched battleground/border states ads that factions of the right wing will run in the GE fusing T Kennedy and Obama’s face together.

LOL… they have done it for years to T Kennedy and Hillary. Now it is Obama’s turn.

My guess is osme polling in the upcoming 22 states is so nerveracking that they were willing to risk a Ted endorsement … infact a dynastic endorsement. They pulled in that chinless ‘map of Ireland’ face from the weeds of RI too.

But they’re not going to vote for Hillary. They probably want to see Giuliani declare a coup and march on Washington with his blackshirts.

Yeah, there are Jewish racists in the Northeast exactly the way there are Catholic racists. And maybe some are in the Democratic party I guess. But do they read Haaretz? Or are they your basic right wing white ethnics?

2.) Cross over to the Republicans and vote for Ron Paul. Winner take all primary.

3.) Vote in the Dem primary. Gravel’s not on the ballot. Kucinich has dropped out but I know know if his names still there are not. Hillary. Edwards. Obama. Uncomitted means the votes go to the top candidate if uncommitted doesn’t get 15%, which it won’t.

Look, they just stitched in the liver for that new Frankenstein monster that the Daley Donklephant machine’s mad scientist is building. Not sure they’ve settled on a name for the monster … currently it looks like “Change” is its first name, with “Hope” the middle name. Perhaps “Suckers” will be the name awarded at first communion. Time will tell, if it walks at all.

The upshot of it is that my vote doesn’t mean shit. Even if Kucinich is still on the ballot, and I vote for him, Hillary (who’s probably going to win the state) gets his delegates. Of course, I have yet to meet anybody in person (in suburban NJ) who’s ever heard of Dennis Kucinich. Ron Paul signs everywhere. The Paultards have been out and about in a major way. But Kucinich? Nothing.

[E]ven if we take Change and Belief in the post-linguistic, Singularity-Now, realm-of-pure-forms spirit in which it is apparently meant by the Obama campaign, the movie-trailer tagline that Nothing is the Same because Everything is Different, then we are still left with the specter of three members of the political dynasty most representative of the Democratic Party brand qua brand pimping soft revolution.

…

Anyway, the Obama campaign proposes that there is content to belief. They believe in change. And what is change? It’s what they believe it. They approach tautology at Warp 9 and slingshot through its vast gravity into the past.

With the cost of contraception skyrocketing on college campuses throughout the country, the price of the pill is suddenly big talk on Capitol Hill. And Congress, which apparently caused the jump in prices with a legislative error, is under growing pressure to intervene.

Birth-control advocates are calling it a crisis: Packets of birth-control pills that once cost $5 to $10 for a monthly supply are now selling for $40 to $50. Officials at Planned Parenthood say the higher prices are putting birth control out of reach for many financially strapped students, and they want Congress to make the issue a top priority.

The soaring prices are the result of a quirk in a new federal law that was aimed at saving taxpayers money.

Since 1990, Congress had allowed pharmaceutical companies to offer discounted drugs to college students and low-income people. But when Congress passed its deficit-reduction bill in 2005, it included a provision that disallowed university health clinics from getting access to the reduced-price drugs.

Districts in big cities of the Midwest and Northeast undergo the most change.

Chicago – At one time, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina was a model of court-ordered integration.

Today, nearly a decade after a court struck down its racial-balancing busing program, the school district is moving in the opposite direction. More than half of its elementary schools are either more than 90 percent black or 90 percent white.

“Charlotte is rapidly resegregating,” says Carol Sawyer, a parent and member of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Equity Committee.

It’s a trend that is occurring around the country and is even more pronounced than expected in the wake of court cases dismantling both mandated and voluntary integration programs, a new report says. The most segregated schools, according to the report, which documents desegregation trends, are in big cities of the Northeast and Midwest. The South and West – and rural areas and small towns generally – offer minority students a bit more diversity.

Suburbs of large cities, meanwhile, are becoming the new frontier: areas to which many minorities are moving. (as the young and wealthy move back to cities, will we eventually replicate the French suburbs … just wondering.)

These places still have a chance to remain diverse communities but are showing signs of replicating the segregation patterns of the cities themselves.

These places still have a chance to remain diverse communities but are showing signs of replicating the segregation patterns of the cities themselves.

Well I suggest the writer apply him or herself to Teddy’s speech today.

There is no black v whtie, there is no gender issues, there is no contrast or struggle at all. There is no opposition. There is meld.

Something like a squished white chicken sandwish with yellow cheese. That is the future.

That, struggle and opposition, is the past.

What is happening, quite clearly IMO, is the Federal government, in whomsoever’s hands, is divesting itself of codifying much less ensuring rights and protections for people. I would go so far as to say the idea of being a citizen of one nation is going…

It will devolve to the states. And while I won’t live to see it, I think it is a major step to the country breaking apart.

If your federal government ONLY collects taxes and remands bits of money to certain regions… and lectures and hectors you (and drafts you), why bother.

What is happening, quite clearly IMO, is the Federal government, in whomsoever’s hands, is divesting itself of codifying much less ensuring rights and protections for people. I would go so far as to say the idea of being a citizen of one nation is going…

It will devolve to the states. And while I won’t live to see it, I think it is a major step to the country breaking apart.

Well yes it is. But there are also these deadly Islamo Fascist Turrists who could roll that freedom all the way back from Anbar to Staten Island in 20 minutes if we don’t keep up the pressure. And them Eye Ranians are given them turrists guns.

But I also believe that there is such a thing as FINALITY. Stars can explode. Planets can die. Species can cease to exist. Forever. Obama and Hillary are going to be swallowed by this, just as well as Bush and Cheney. And the rest of us sorry and weary souls.

The only thing left is to be true to yourself and to your highest values. Live as honorably and as truthfully as you can, as one lone individual. Do what good you can and spend time with people who have integrity. Do no harm to others or to the environment; protect and preserve the Good, the True, and the Beautiful as best you can.

Because when the shit hits the fan, the laws our officials flagrantly violate now in our name, for the benefit of the national security state, will no longer matter on a day-to-day basis.

Well, apparently, first we were supposed to be reliving the 60s (MLK), then it was the 80s (Ronnie) and now we’re back to the 60s again. I’m getting whiplash. Can we get a do-over of the 70s? There’s an old boyfriend I’d like to smack upside the head.

Here is one pronouncement you will not hear George W. Bush make in his finally final SOTU address tonight: We are now living in a post-American world. Too bad too, because it would have been sweet karma to hear it come from the lips of Dubya, poster boy for the crony capitalism, corporatism uber alles, evangelical nation-building, neoconservative imperialism, and American exceptionalism that has brought us to where we are today: second place.

What’s more, while the Bush administration grew ever more surly and arrogant and isolated — insanely convinced that they could create their own reality — the technocrats in Brussels just smiled politely and kept the EU economies humming along. At the same time, a surging China forged ties with Venezuela and Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Iran, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and India and Pakistan, as well as Japan and smaller Southeast Asian countries.

But Lou Dobbs will tell you — five times a week for a full hour — that the problem with our economy is that pesky porous border with Mexico. And Larry Kudlow will tell you — five times a week for a full hour — that the problem with our economy is the capital gains tax and the death tax. And Cramer will tell you — five times a week for a full hour — that the problem with our economy is … well, I’m not sure because he‘s incoherent.

Disclaimer: I am first and foremost a Democrat. I will work long and hard for our nominee and will not hold my nose voting for any of the big three. I live in a divided household – my husband is JRE, and I am Obama. I am so proud of him standing by his candidate. I encourage all of us to respect those decisions. And I hope the HRC and JRE folks are getting out and doing the work for their candidate. This diary is about motivating Obama supporters.

The tragic fact isn’t that we’re living in a post american world, but that no public figure in the United States accepts publicly this increasingly obvious fact. WIth all the talk of change, nothing will change, until this happens.

i’ve been reading through dahr jamail’s book on iraq, and am just coming to the series of seiges of fallujah in 2004. i remember reading his reports here and there, but having it in one place like this paints a far more fucked up picture than the fucked up one that i had in my head.

that hulagu khan graffito is looking like less and less of an analogy and more and more like an understatement.

So.

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Following its election in January on a pledge to confront the austerity program that's decimated Greece's economy, the Syriza government has faced a major pushback from international creditors led by Germany. Days after Greece secured a four-month extension to a loan package in exchange for new conditions on its spending, Noam Chomsky says the Euro […]

World-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky discusses why National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden should be welcomed back to the United States as a hero and why those who authorized the government surveillance he exposed should be on trial, not him. Chomsky also argues that while mass surveillance has been ineffective i […]

The Islamic State might be the best-funded radical Islamist group, perhaps in history, but the coalition air campaign that’s targeting its oil-refining operations and military assets has begun to damage…Click to Continue »

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu implored Congress on Tuesday to reject a nuclear deal currently being negotiated with Iran, calling it a threat to the survival of Israel and its…Click to Continue »

As Republican lawmakers criticized Hillary Clinton Tuesday for using her personal email account to conduct government business at the State Department, the White House would not say whether the former…Click to Continue »

At the annual American-Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, speakers advanced Iran as an existential threat and sought to downplay differences between Israel and the US while demonstrators were arrested outside

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday the Senate would begin debate next week on a bill that would require President Barack Obama to submit any final nuclear deal with Iran for Congress' approval.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the United States on Tuesday that it was negotiating a bad deal with Iran that could spark a "nuclear nightmare," drawing a rebuke from President Barack Obama and exposing a deepening U.S.-Israeli rift.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives approved full fiscal-year funding for the U.S. domestic security agency on Tuesday, dealing a blow to conservative Republicans who had wanted the bill to include language blocking President Barack Obama's recent executive orders on immigration.

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from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.